Vanilla Bean Macarons with Passion Fruit Buttercream Filling

Making macarons is new to me, and knowing MacTweet is even newer to me! Thank you Tina for introducing Mactweet to me! I have learnt so much from there, and think I have gotten the hang of making macarons, woo hoo!

Well, here's Vanilla Bean Macarons with Passion Fruit Buttercream, my first entry for mac-attack-15-macinspirational ! I loved vanilla bean and I definitely loved passion fruit! In fact I actually planted passion fruit behind my kitchen in our holiday home down south in Pontian, Johor! And, I have attempted making macarons there, and they turned out beautifully! So, the next time when I'm there and when my passion fruits bear fruits, I will make some macarons and share them with my neighbours! 

I used Tartelette's basic recipe and scrape half a Vanilla Bean into my sugar...and added 3 tablspoons of passion fruit pulp into my buttercream. The passion fruits were from Pontian, MIL brought them when she came visiting us last weekend! 

Ingredients (which I halved)

45g egg whites, aged for 3 days in the fridge
15g sugar, which I added some wilton egg yellow colour
55g almond powder
100g icing sugar
beans from half vanilla bean

Method
1.Prepare baking tray with baking paper. Prepare piping bag, I just snipped off the tip of the piping bag to the size of about 1 cm.
2.Whisk egg whites until frothy, like shaving foam, gradually add in sugar that you have mixed with vanilla bean. Whisk until stiff meringue, but not dry.
3.Mix almond icing sugar mixture until well incorporated and do the macaronnage until just, and get a dropping consistency, like  thick cake batter.
4.Pour in piping bag and pipe to the size of 50 cents coin and rap the baking tins a couple of times on you work top to let air loose from the batter.
5.Let the batter rest for about half an hour....err due to very humid weather lately, I had to wait for almost 1 1/2 hours before they form skin!
6.Bake at 150Celcius for about 20 minutes.

Passion Fruit Buttercream Filling (adapted Hisako Igata's recipe)
120g soft butter
4 tbsp caster sugar
4tbsp water
1 egg
3 tbsp passionfruit pulp

Method
1.Whisk egg until pale and foamy.
2.Make sugar syrup by boiling sugar and water.
3.While whisking egg, slowly pour sugar syrup into the egg, keep whisking until it turns foamy and dense.
4.Add soft butter bit by bit, the mix might separate, but bear with me, keep on whisking until you get a creamy mixture.
5.Add the passion fruit flesh.

Here's the passion fruit behind my house in Pontian that had it's first fruit! This breed of passion fruit was from Indonesia!

The taste of the macarons...mmmmm...heavenly subtle hint of vanilla with a punch of tangy sweet sour passion fruit, love it love it love it!